Page 59
He looks up from the photo and I want to say it. It’s right here. But I want it to be right when I say it the first time.
“Thank you,” I say instead. “For tonight.”
He sets the picture down on top of the stack, carefully aligning them.
“Anytime, honey,” he says.
Aww. My heart loves that so much.
I keep my words for now. I tuck it away like a seed in a packet, and I carry it home across the dark lot holding his hand.
It’s cold enough to sting my nose. The gravel crunches under our boots, and halfway across the lot I start shivering because I forgot my coat at home.
Travis stops. He hands me the foil-wrapped paper plate he’s carrying, and shrugs out of his flannel.
“Here,” he rasps as he puts it around my shoulders. It’s warm from him.
“Now you’ll freeze,” I say.
“I was a Ranger.”
I laugh. “That’s not an answer.”
“It really is.”
I pull his flannel tighter and keep my mouth shut, because if I open it right now, the seed’s coming out. We walk across the lot. It’s not far, but we’re not in a hurry.
“Hank looked so tired tonight,” I say to fill the silence.
“Yeah.” Travis is quiet for a few steps. “I think he’s carrying something. I’ve thought so for a few days…”
“Hank? Carrying what?”
“Don’t know yet. Gabe’s still running names.”
I remember Hank in the shop doorway, turning his hat around in his hands. “He’s eighty-one, and he’s been alone out there since June died. That’s what he’s carrying.”
That’s when I make up my mind. “I’ll take him soup this week. Danielle would’ve.”
“I’ll drive you.”
My porch light is on. When we get to the steps, the furnace is humming inside. He put the new igniter in Monday night, flat on his back on my basement floor with a headlamp in his teeth.
“Listen to that,” I say, smiling. “You’re a handy guy to have around.”
He opens the door, and keeps his hand on my back as he guides me inside. This time I’m the one who backs him against the door. “You’re good at a lot of things, you know.”
“Like stacking folding chairs…”
“Like folding me up.”
His brows shoot up, but I don’t give him time to say anything else before I attack his mouth like I’ve been waiting to do it all night.
Chapter Twenty
The Next Afternoon
Gabe looks at me across his desk at the sheriff’s office after he takes off his reading glasses and rubs his eyes.
